In the News Archives

Program to Inspire Minority Under-graduates in EHS Research (PrIMER)

The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) awarded Joe Graziano, Greg Freyer (Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health) and Lissette Delgado-Cruzata (John Jay College of Criminal Justice) a grant to develop PrIMER. The five-year program started this summer with eight undergraduates from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, part of the City University of New York (CUNY), conducting research alongside Columbia University Environmental Health Sciences faculty mentors for 10 weeks at Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health. Each student will spend two years in the program. The ultimate goal is to encourage the students to apply to graduate programs and pursue careers in environmental health sciences. On August 6th and 7th, the PrIMER students presented their research to an audience of Columbia and John Jay faculty and staff. Three of the eight students have mentors that include CU SRP faculty; Natalia Fernandez presented "Risk Factors of Lead Exposure in Children and Adolescents in Bangladesh” (mentor Joe Graziano), Argenis Ramologan presented “Validation Study of Collected Parameters by the Hexoskin vs. Laboratory Standards” (mentors Aimee Layton, Darby Jack, and Steve Chillrud) and Crystal Kennedy presented “Biking, Air Pollution and Health: A Pilot Study” (mentors Darby Jack, Cara Smith and Steve Chillrud). The students will continue to work with the Columbia faculty throughout the ongoing academic year.

Presentation of Household Survey Findings to NJDEP and NJDOH Staff

On August 19th, CU SRP Community Engagement and Research Translation Core scientists Yan Zheng and Sara Flanagan along with New Jersey DEP Research Scientist Steve Spayd presented the findings of their 2014 household survey on private well water testing in Northern NJ and 2015 follow-up water sampling activities. They met in Trenton with six staff members of the NJ Departments of Health and Environmental Protection, including a manager of the DOH Environmental Health Tracking Program which funded the study, the DEP Bureau Chief of Safe Drinking Water, and the DEP Chief Information Officer. The presentation was well received by the audience. Findings will be published in a forthcoming comprehensive technical report of the survey and water sampling and in peer reviewed journals.

Columbia University Earth Institute State of the Planet online news blog highlights the Columbia SRP’s research and activities related to studying and remediating arsenic in drinking water in Bangladesh. “Battling ‘the Largest Mass Poisoning in History'” (http://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2015/07/13/battling-the-largest-mass-poison...) was published online on July 13th, 2015 and updated July 25th by Kevin Krajick and David Funkhouser. The article extensively reviews “a wide range of initiatives, including long-term health programs, continued drilling of safer wells, education and continuing investigations into the geology of arsenic contamination.” It highlights the research and findings by the Columbia SRP scientists and their partners, including Dr. Joseph Graziano, Dr. Lex van Geen, Dr. Kazi Matin Ahmed, Ms. Sara Flanagan, Dr. Brian Mailloux and Mr. Tyler Ellis, and Dr. Benjamin Bostick.

The Columbia SRP team have tested and labeled more than 50,000 wells. Its longitudinal health study includes more than 35,000 residents from the Araihazar District. The integration of both exposure and health data has generated a much more comprehensive understanding of the toxicity of arsenic from very low to extremely high doses.

The Columbia SRP scientists go beyond just studying the health impacts and exposure pathways of arsenic in drinking water to providing health education, medical care, and innovative tools and technologies. They have used tools to speed tests and cataloging of wells, such as inexpensive, simple field water-sampling kits and cell-phone technology that send results to a central database in Dhaka. Dr. Graziano heralds the positive results from their efforts, “The best thing is, our education and prevention efforts have led to a 28 percent reduction in the arsenic blood level of our subjects.”

Dr. Kazi Matin Ahmed, a hydrogeologist at the University of Dhaka, is a Co-Investigator of the Columbia SRP Project 6 and has worked closely since the beginning of the program with Deputy Director and Project 6 PI Dr. Lex van Geen. As part of the biomedical projects, early on Columbia saw a need to provide medical services study area. Today, Dr. Tariqul Islam serves as the clinic’s director, overseeing a four-building complex and 125 employees who provide basic health and dental services to the area. The clinic offers an array of diagnostic tools—X-ray, EKG and ultrasound machines, and state-of-the-science equipment to test blood and take DNA samples.

Columbia scientists in Bangladesh also collaborate with other health, earth, and social science researchers from the University of Chicago, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Delaware, the University of Dhaka, Duke University, Universitat Pompeu Fabra and Texas A&M University.

July 7 2015

CU SRP Student Caitlin Howe wins First Prize for Poster at International Conference in France

Columbia SRP Student Caitlin Howe received First Prize for Best Poster at the 10th International Conference on One Carbon Metabolism, B vitamins and Homocysteine held at the Medical School of the University of Lorraine in Nancy, France, July 7-11, 2015. Ms. Howe presented the poster, “One-carbon metabolism indices, folic acid supplementation, and histone modifications in Bangladeshi adults”. The following scientists collaborated with Ms. Howe on this research: X Liu, MN Hall, V Ilievski, M Caudill, Faruque Parvez, Abu B. Siddique, Hasan Shahriar, Nasir Uddin, Tariqul Islam, JH Graziano, and MV Gamble.

Kids Test Water for Arsenic at World Science Festival

SRP Project 4 PI Ben Bostick hosted an exhibit at the World Science Festival in New York City on May 30th, where more than 500 children participated in a field kit-based water-testing laboratory analyzing groundwater arsenic.

April 14 2015

Director Joe Graziano testifies before Maine State Legislature

Columbia's SRP Director, Joe Graziano, testified before the Maine Legislature's Labor, Commerce, Research and Economic Development Committee on April 14th regarding the proposed bill LD 937, on Private Well Water testing requirements. Both Dr. Graziano and our SRP Community Engagement Core PI Yan Zheng also sent in written testimony for this bill and a similar one, LD 1162, presented to another committee.

Columbia’s CEC partner, Bob Marvinney had this to say:
“Joe Graziano brought a very important message to the Maine Legislature today with his testimony on LD 937, a bill which provides mechanisms to increase private well testing and remediation in Maine. It was very helpful for the legislative committee to hear directly from a prominent member of the public health community on the issue of arsenic in private well water. We hope the Legislature will take some action!”

Referring to the research led by Dr. Graziano’s SRP Project 2 research, Michael Shepherd with the Portland Herald noted, “The issue gained more attention last year, when scientists from Columbia University and the University of New Hampshire released a five-year study of 272 students in grades 3 through 5 at schools in Manchester, Readfield, Monmouth, Wayne, Mount Vernon and Hallowell who were exposed to arsenic in water. It found that exposure to even low levels could lower IQ levels by as many as six points on a test.”

The majority of the committee voted to pass the bill as amended. A minority voted not to pass the bill. The full legislature passed with very strong bipartisan votes in both the House (108-40) and Senate (22-13) the Act to Ensure Safe Drinking Water for Maine Families (LD 1162), championed by Rep. Drew Gattine, Rep. Karen Vachon, and Rep. Gary Hilliard. However, on June 26th Maine Governor Paul LePage vetoed the bill. An attempt to override the veto on June 30th fell four votes short in the House. Proponents are hopeful that the growing support for well water testing will secure passage of future legislation.

Ben Bostick presents at Earth2Class “Saturday Workshop for Educators”

Earth to Class (E2C) provides unique resources for K-12 teachers, students, geoscientists, and the general public. It is a collaboration among Columbia LDEO researchers, technical specialists at Colégio Bandeirantes, São Paulo, Brasil and US classroom teachers. Dr. Michael J. Passow, an earth science educator and Associate Research Scientist at Columbia's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, started the weekend workshop series in 1998 for the advancement of Earth Science Education and Teacher enhancement. Participants receive a certificate of attendance at each workshop that has been accepted for District professional development credits. The “Earth2Class” website (http://earth2class.org) archives versions of the workshop; resources for middle and high school Earth Science teachers and students; suggestions for incorporating educational technology into the classroom; links to science education and professional societies; and many other useful materials. According to Dr. Passow, the website has averaged more than 300,000 hits per month.

Previously, CU SRP Associate Director, Dr. Alexander van Geen, presented “Arsenic in the Groundwaters of Bangladesh” and Co-Investigator Martin Stute gave a a talk on “Visualization of Groundwater Flow Using Sand Boxes, Links to Local and International Water Resources Issues” as part of the Earth to Class Saturday Workshop series.

Please see the links below to the Earth2Class presentations related to arsenic given by Columbia Superfund Research Program scientists.

The editors of the new online epigenetics blog (EpiBeat) invited SRP student Caitlin Howe to write a short summary of her Letter to publish on the EpiBeat blog regarding her recent findings related to histone modifications. Ms. Howe and Project 3 PI Dr. Mary Gamble have identified a cleavage product of histone H3 in human peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs), which interferes with the measurement of downstream modifications, (such as H3K9me2). They reported this finding earlier this year in a Letter to the Editor, which was published in Clinical Epigenetics, the official journal of the Clinical Epigenetics Society.

Histone modifications are increasingly being used as biomarkers of cancer prognosis and survival. They are also novel targets of interest for environmental epidemiology studies.

On Monday, 23rd February 2015, Dr. Thomas R. Kulp, Assistant Professor with the Department of Geological Sciences and Environmental Studies at Binghamton University, SUNY, presented, "The geomicrobiology of arsenic and antimony".

Links to the YouTube video recording of the presentation and the pdf of the slide presentation are available below.

CBS News Video Features Columbia SRP Director Dr. Graziano

As part of the online CBS News video "Health worries about Arsenic", Dr. Graziano explains that scientific research now attributes a wide range of long-term health effects from exposures to arsenic in food and water. Columbia's SRP studies indicate that prenatal exposure to Arsenic via drinking water can also alter DNA and cause serious health effects later in life. In addition to Dr. Graziano, the clip shows Columbia SRP graduate student Tiffany Sanchez conducting tests in the Center's Trace Metals laboratory.